STUFF

Brit Columbia deal with indigenous people to fast-track development of LNG export terminal.

New software allowing manufacturers to track carbon footprints of individual products.

Fracture found in N Sea carbon storage facility. Raising doubts on viability of tech.

Progress Energy Carolinas switching to NG from coal at power plants.

S Africa shale gas moratorium lifted. Potentially opening world's 5th largest reserves.

Suntech Power (China), world's largest solar panel maker, announced temp reduction of production capacity for solar cells from 2.4Gw/yr to 1.8. Will keep 2.4Gw panel capacity. Solar cell prices down 45% past year. Other solar manufacturers expected to follow suit to return to positive operating cash flows in '13.

US solar industry facing ~$70M shortfall in solar worker training funds next 4 years. Industry avg $30K to train a worker.

Cal PUC analysis says state can add 15Gw of local solar (20Mw (Kw?) and less each) to grid by '20.

New study - Global Biofuels Outlook to '25 - finds disconnect between mandates (RFS in US, RED in EU) and actual market demand. Known, but not acknowledged or addressed.

DOE gave AZ State U $15M to be algae testbed. National labs, universities, corps to contrib.

Canada cut ties with Iran.

Airbus released plan to create sustainable aviation industry by '50. Reduction of flight times by avg 13 minutes would save 9M tons of fuel/yr. 5 concepts, including sustainable biofuels.

UK's National Nuke Lab showed benefits of Thorium have been exaggerated. Advantages only manifest in new high-temp reactor, not traditional water-cooled.

German study found global cleantech industry to be > $4T Euro/yr by mid-20's from > $2T Euro now. Grown almost 12%/yr since '07. So, double in 13 years. Cleantech has reached sustained growth.

Japan now accounts for 7% of world's total installed PV cap. 3rd largest in world. Near 5Gw. My math puts world roughly around 70Gw installed. Check my math. Or past "STUFF".

Spain to intro 6% tax on all domestic energy production.

Summer of '13, NREL to feature largest supercomputer dedicated to clean energy research. To use 3,200 Intel Xeon microprocessors and Xeon Phi co-processors. $10M. Phi focused on reduced energy use for high-performance computing aps. Also new HP cooling system running warm water through racks.

Researchers from Rice U and a Belgian U came up with spray-on lith-ion batt.

IBM making progress on copper-zinc-tin-selenium solar cells.

Honda reusing rare earth metals from old car batts.

US "tight" oil (fracked) production forecasted to rise from 1.5Mb/d this year to 4.1 in '20. Bakken 1.3M, Eagle Ford 1.3M, Permian 440K, Niobrara 90K. And other. May be optimistic.

In '10, China produced almost 1/2 of world's coal tonnage of 8B short tons. (Does that include Mongolia?) World production increased steadily through last decade.